Saturday, October 15, 2016

Carry On

A Portrait of Mary
Wanlass

Upon a wall
within the Provo City Center Temple hangs a lovely painting by Elspeth Young
entitled Carry On, which depicts a fifteen-year-old
girl named Mary Martha Wanlass. She
stands somewhere on the vast American plains between Missouri, her point of
departure, and Utah, her ultimate destination.
Behind her in the west, the Rocky Mountain foothills beckon beneath the
clouds, vaguely marking the goal toward which she has been striving for several
months. By now any food stores are
presumably exhausted, so she feeds herself and her family by foraging for
berries, flowers, and any other edible plants that she can find at the end of
each day’s journey. She holds in her left
arm a hat turned upside down, into which she gathers her simple, meager
harvest.

The
painting shows only Mary, but in the unseen family wagon lies her helpless
father, Jackson Russell Wanlass, forty years old but already felled by two debilitating
strokes. Mary also cares for four small
children: her eight-year-old brother, also named Jackson; her seven-year-old
sister, Sarah; and two four-year-old twins, her sister Ann Jane and her brother
Samuel Russell. Mary’s mother and
stepmother are no longer living.

The year is
1863, and the season is late summer. The
family has been traveling all alone throughout the spring and summer and will
not arrive until September. Back in
Missouri, the American Civil War has been raging for more than two years. Here in this western wilderness, Mary and the
other five members of her family are waging a war of their own, a daily battle
to survive and to keep moving.

* * *

Mary was
born in Alston, England on May 20, 1848.
Mary’s mother, Sarah Bell, gave birth to Mary’s brother William (named
after an uncle on the Wanlass side) on March 10, 1850, but he died less than a
year later on February 15, 1851. Mary’s
mother passed away about five months after that on July 21, when Mary was three
years old.

Mary’s
father then married Jane Bell, and different sources dispute whether Jane was
Sarah’s older sister or a close friend of the family who happened to have the
same last name as Sarah. Though already
in her thirties, Jane gave birth to five children. The first of these, a little boy named John,
died in infancy in 1854, when Jane was thirty-two. The other four children, born in 1855, 1856,
and two in 1858, are the four siblings already mentioned above who made the
trek with Mary in 1863.

The message
of the restored gospel reached Alston in the early 1850s. Mary’s family was among the first converts,
and they wanted to gather to Zion to join the main body of Latter-Day Saints in
the Rocky Mountains of Utah. Of the
Wanlasses, Mary’s uncle William was the first to emigrate from England, but
before completing the journey to Utah, he took up residence in Richmond, Ray
County, Missouri, probably in 1854 or 1855.

In 1856,
when Mary was eight years old, she immigrated to the United States along with
her father, her stepmother, and her two siblings, Jackson and Sarah, whose
respective ages were only seventeen months and six months when the voyage began. With financial help from Mary’s uncle
William, the family of five departed from England on November 18 aboard the sailing
ship Columbia and sailed for a month
and a half, arriving in the United States on January 1, 1857.

From New
York City they made their way to their uncle’s residence in Missouri and
settled there for several years, though they never forgot that their initial
goal in emigrating from England was to eventually join the Saints in the Great
Salt Lake Valley.

Mary’s
father was a miner by profession, and in Missouri he took up mining coal to
provide for the family. Though Mary was
still a young child at the time, reaching the age of nine in May of 1857, she
helped her father with this enterprise by crawling in and out of the coal mine
he had dug, pushing a homemade coal car in front of her. She scraped her knees doing this work, and
for the rest of her life, her knees were black from coal dust that had become
embedded in her skin.

The twins
Ann Jane and Samuel Russell were born in Richmond, Missouri, on September 12,
1858.

Not long
before their birth, Mary’s father suffered a stroke that paralyzed his left
side and impaired his speech. He was
only about thirty-five years old at the time.
Ten-year-old Mary and her thirty-six-year-old stepmother Jane nursed him
for months, but he never made a full recovery.

Sometime
during the next four years, Jane’s health took a turn for the worse, and she
gradually declined until she finally passed away on June 6, 1862, at the age of
forty. As Jane lay dying, she pleaded
with Mary to take the family to Zion.
“Don’t give your father any peace until he goes to the Rocky Mountains,”
she said. At the age of fourteen, Mary
became the de facto head of household, in charge of caring for a partially
disabled father and four younger children.
Her brother Jackson turned seven four days after his mother’s
death. Sarah was six years old, and the
twins Ann and Samuel were still just three.

Mary must
have possessed a robust and admirable stubborn streak, an iron-willed pioneer
determination, because despite her young age and her heavy domestic burdens,
she resolved to take herself and the other children to Utah even if she had to
make the journey without her father. She
told her father of her intention, and he must have felt the strength of her
resolution, because it motivated him to sell everything he owned in order to purchase
a wagon, a yoke of oxen, some cows, and some provisions for the journey. Though partially disabled, he was determined
to make the journey with them.

I don’t
know when Mary’s uncle William made the trek west, but he made the journey
before Mary did, and William settled in Lehi, Utah. Perhaps William’s completion of the final
move to Zion served as a motivating factor for Mary’s family.

* * *

Mary and
her family departed in the spring of 1863, sometime before May 10. Mary’s father arranged to join a group of
non-Mormon immigrants in St. Louis who were heading to Oregon. His plan was to travel with them to Iowa,
where his family could join with a company of Mormons heading to Utah. I assume that his intention was to travel to
the vicinity of Council Bluffs, then turn west and follow the Mormon Trail
across Nebraska and Wyoming to reach the settlements along the Wasatch Front.

But soon
after starting the journey, Mary’s father suffered another stroke, this one
coming about five years after the first one hit, and this second stroke left
him bedridden in the wagon. The family
lost more than a week before they could get moving again, and by now they were
too far behind to catch up. From here
on, they were largely on their own.

When I
contemplate Mary’s circumstances at that time, I wonder if she considered
turning back. She was a
fourteen-year-old girl with no adult help, caring for a bedridden father,
watching over four young children, managing a wagon, a team of oxen, and some
cows, and even traveling during wartime across a state where several battles
had been fought and where deserters and renegades roamed the territory.

Yet Mary
pressed on.

Why?

I prefer to
believe that she possessed great faith and a strong desire to join her uncle
William, thereby fulfilling the family’s long-standing goal to reach Zion. She most certainly possessed tremendous
determination. She had crossed the
Atlantic with her family more than six years earlier, and maybe she felt that
the final push to Utah was long overdue.
Maybe she was especially driven by the last wish of her dying
stepmother.

Then again,
maybe she was just an ordinary person compelled by extraordinary circumstances
to press on no matter what, because she had no other realistic options. Maybe the family simply had nothing to return
to.

We can
speculate about what Mary may or may not have been thinking when her father
suffered that second stroke at the beginning of their trek, but one hard fact
remains beyond any speculation: Mary pressed on. When the odds aligned against her and reason
might have urged her to turn back, she chose instead to press on.

She didn’t
even know the specifics of her route, though I assume she knew what her father
had planned. She didn’t even have a
compass. Someone had told her to head
west until the clouds turned into mountains, and she took that vague direction
as her guide while she and her beleaguered family plodded past the last
remnants of civilization and pressed forward alone into the desolate expanses
of the Great Plains.

I assume
that they must have traveled roughly along the Oregon Trail (which the Mormon
Trail overlaps for long stretches), especially if they never made it to Iowa but
headed west out of Missouri.

They made a
wrong turn early on and ended up crossing through hostile territory for at
least part of their journey. They saw
Indians constantly, who often joined their camp at night. Sometimes the Indians harassed and
intimidated them, such as by shouting and rushing toward them and waving
blankets to spook the cattle. But the
Indians never harmed them and sometimes were friendly and helpful, such as when
they learned that Mary’s father was sick and brought her some rabbits and ducks
to cook.

I don’t
know exactly how long it took Mary to get her family from Missouri to Utah, but
it was at least four months and might have been longer. Day by day she pressed on through
interminable monotony and physical hardship and inconvenience as she gradually
covered that great distance across a lonely and dangerous wilderness,
eventually having to live off the land by daily foraging to keep herself and
her family alive.

At last the clouds did turn into mountains, a symbol of hope that the journey was nearing
its end, but also a tremendous obstacle, for soon Mary had to drive her weary
animals and battered wagon across the steepest and rockiest terrain that they
had encountered so far. In this respect,
the mountains represented the most difficult part of her journey.

After
pushing through the mountains until the grade tipped downward, Mary eventually
found herself in a canyon and came across a white man by the name of Fred
Trane. He happened to be from Lehi and
even knew Mary’s uncle William. He told
her that she was in Echo Canyon. This
meant she was a little more than fifty miles northeast of Salt Lake City and had
traveled more than a thousand miles since leaving Richmond, Missouri. Mr. Trane pointed out a shortcut that Mary could
take to reach Lehi faster.

Sometime in
September, Mary and her family rejoined the family of her uncle William, and
Mary settled down in Lehi, where she resided for the rest of her life.

* * *

Mary’s
family lived with her uncle William at first, then built a small dugout on his
property with his help. The term “dugout,”
also known as a “mud hut,” “pit-house,” or “earth lodge,” is apt—it basically
refers to a relatively shallow hole dug out of the ground with some walls built
up at its edges and a roof covering them.
This tiny dugout, along with the family wagon, served as the residence
for Mary and the other five members of her family during the winter of 1863–64.

In the
spring of 1864, Mary’s family acquired a vacant lot within a few blocks of her
uncle William’s home, and he helped them build a larger dugout on this
property. This “larger” home was barely
twelve feet by twelve feet, hardly the size of a roomy bedroom in a modern
house, and the hole in the ground for it was six feet deep. References to mud walls, a mud fireplace, and
blankets covering a window and the door to keep out the cold remind me of just
how poor and rudimentary life was for some of those early Mormon pioneers when
they first arrived in Utah.

Mary’s
father made a partial, short-term recovery, though his speech was never clear,
he struggled to walk, and he was unable to perform much work. He died on October 31, 1864, at the age of
forty-one, a little more than a year after making the trek, and was buried in
an unmarked grave whose precise location is unknown.

Much of the information that follows comes from Ancestry.com and probably includes errors, but it gives us at least an approximate picture of Mary's life after she made her remarkable trek.
I don’t
know exactly when Mary met her husband, but on November 26, 1866, when she was
eighteen and a half years old, she gave birth to her first child, a little girl
named Sarah Ann. The father was William
Lawrence Hutchings, who was born in Purtington, Somersetshire, England, on
October 11, 1829. If we count back nine
months from the birth of Sarah Ann, then we can probably assume that Mary
Wanlass became the wife of William Hutchings not later than February 1866, when
Mary was still seventeen years old and William was thirty-six, more than twice
her age.

William had
been married previously to a woman named Mary Robbins, who was born in 1840 and
would have turned twenty-six in 1866.
Her death date is unknown, however, so if we assume that Mary Wanlass
was not a plural wife and that William did not divorce his first wife, then we
can also assume that Mary Robbins died before Mary Wanlass became William’s
second wife. William did not have any
children by his first wife. By contrast,
Mary Wanlass bore William ten children.
Mary Wanlass was never married to anyone other than to him.

Mary’s
first child, Sarah Ann Hutchings, lived slightly more than a year, then died as
an infant on December 8, 1867.

Mary’s
second child, a little girl by the name of Kaziah Hutchings, was born a year
later on December 10, 1868, but died after only three weeks on January 2,
1869. The First Transcontinental
Railroad was completed at Promontory, Utah, four months later on May 10, the
birthday of Mary’s sister Sarah.

Mary’s
third child, a boy named William Eli Hutchings, was born on August 13, 1870, a
little more than a year before the Great Chicago Fire. He lived to maturity and was married three
times, but never had any children. He
died at the age of sixty-eight in Ogden, Utah, in 1939.

Mary’s fourth
child, a boy named Lawrence J. Hutchings, was born in 1873, though the exact
date is not known. He lived to maturity,
got married and had two children, and died on New Year’s Day in 1953 at the age
of seventy-nine (unless he was born on New Year’s Day, in which case he died at
the age of eighty).

Mary’s
fifth child, a boy named Richard Jackson Hutchings, was born in 1875, though
the exact date of his birth is also unknown.
He lived to maturity and got married, but he never had any
children. He died in 1937 at the age of
sixty-one or sixty-two.

Mary’s
sixth child was another little girl. She
was named Mary Isabelle Hutchings and was born on January 9, 1878, but she did
not live to maturity. She died on
October 20, 1885, at the age of seven, when Mary was pregnant with her ninth
child.

Mary’s
seventh child, a boy named Samuel A. Hutchings, was born on March 9, 1881. He lived to maturity, got married, and had
eleven children. He died in 1931 at the
age of fifty.

Mary’s
eighth child, a girl named Annie Sophia Hutchings, was born on April 2,
1884. She lived to adulthood, got
married, and had children. She died in 1924 at the relatively
young age of forty, the same age at which Jane Bell died in Missouri in 1862.

Mary’s
ninth child, a boy named Edwin Millen Hutchings, was born on April 24,
1886. He lived to maturity and got
married, but he also never had any children.
He died in 1970 at the age of eighty-four.

Mary’s
tenth and last child, a boy named John Hutchings, was born in 1889, the year Mary turned forty-one, though his
exact date of birth is unknown. He lived
to maturity, got married, and had four children. Of Mary’s ten children, he lived the
longest. He died in 1977 at the age of
eighty-seven or eighty-eight.

In sum,
Mary had six sons and four daughters.
All of her sons lived to adulthood, but three of her four daughters died
when they were children, two as babies.

Mary
herself died on September 13, 1907, in Lehi, Utah, at the age of fifty-nine,
forty-four years to the month after her lonely, remarkable trek from Missouri.

Her husband
William passed away less than a year later on August 22, 1908, in Lehi, Utah,
at the age of seventy-eight.

* * *

Early in
the morning of December 17, 2010, firefighters responded to a four-alarm fire
at the Provo Tabernacle. Despite their
best efforts to save the building, the roof collapsed a few hours later, and
the fire almost completely destroyed the structure, though the walls remained
precariously standing. A subsequent
investigation concluded that a 300-watt lamp had been placed too close to a
wooden speaker enclosure, making human error the likely cause of the fire.

Ground had
been broken in 1856 for an earlier tabernacle on the same city block. Completed in 1861, it stood until 1919 and is
sometimes called the Old Provo Tabernacle.

The
building that burned in 2010 was the New Provo Tabernacle. Ground was broken for it in 1882, construction
began in 1883, and by 1886 the building was in use, though construction
continued for a decade and a half until its ultimate completion in 1898. General Conference was held in this building
in April 1886 and again in April 1887.
The Provo Tabernacle was formally dedicated on April 17, 1898, by George
Q. Cannon, first counselor in the First Presidency.

No
historical evidence directly links Mary Wanlass to the Provo Tabernacle, but she
might have attended meetings there. I
personally doubt that she attended General Conference on April 6, 1886, because
she gave birth to her ninth child on April 24 of that year, and Lehi is about
seventeen miles away from Provo. I doubt
that a pregnant woman in her ninth month of pregnancy would have made such an
arduous journey just to attend that conference.
This was also less than six months after she lost her seven-year-old
girl. But I could be wrong. Perhaps she attended General Conference in
April 1887. Or perhaps she attended
other meetings there.

After the
2010 fire, a scorched portrait of Christ was discovered in the rubble. The fire almost completely blackened most of
the portrait, but somehow the image of Christ in the center survived, an
outcome that some people have viewed as a small miracle.

Less than a
year after the fire, President Thomas S. Monson announced that the Provo
Tabernacle would be rebuilt as a temple.
The surviving remnants of the walls were carefully preserved and
incorporated into the new structure, and the Provo City Center Temple was
officially dedicated on March 20, 2016.

The cultural
celebration prior to the dedication adopted the phrase “beauty for ashes” from
Isaiah 61:3 as a theme. It symbolically
describes the transformation of the fire-gutted Provo Tabernacle into the
magnificent Provo City Center Temple. I
remember hearing at least one speaker in church compare the transformation of
this building to the transformation that can occur in people’s lives thanks to
the atonement of Jesus Christ, whose saving power claims repentant sinners. In this way, the Provo City Center Temple
takes on special symbolic meaning for many whose lives have been shattered,
either by sin or by other tragedy, but who have made a spiritual trek akin to
Mary Wanlass’s crossing of the plains as they have put their trust in God and
have allowed Him to lead them to Christ.

Inspired by
sentiments such as these and by the circumstances surrounding the fire and
reconstruction, I composed the following sonnet two months before the
dedication:

Where Once the Tabernacle Burned

Now Stands a Mighty Temple

The Provo Tabernacle, loved by all,

With simple beauty graced the city center

Till fire of human error caused its fall,

And many thought that they no more would enter.

Sometimes our lives collapse because of sin.

Despair afflicts our hearts—the pain runs deep.

The Savior’s image may survive within,

But we see just a filthy, smold’ring heap.

To us God whispers, Do not mourn to see

This tabernacle gutted to its core.

If I remodel, what is that to thee?

I’ve made it better than it was before.

And as from ashes this new temple grew,

My love can build a sinful life anew.

Two days
after the dedication, I spent some time serving in the new Provo City Center
Temple. Like others who attended the
temple with me, I had come to the mountain of the Lord’s house, established in
the top of the mountains, the house of the God of Jacob, to learn of God’s ways
and to walk in his paths (see Isaiah 2:2–3).

Incidentally,
speaking of the house of the God of Jacob, a large staircase occupies the
center of this temple, and when I observe people dressed in white as they go up
and down the stairs between the lower and higher levels, I think of the angels
of God ascending and descending on Jacob’s ladder as recorded in Genesis
28:10–22. “Surely the Lord is in this
place; . . . this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of
heaven.” (Genesis 28:16–17). Through priesthood keys entrusted to the seed
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, temple work blesses all the families of the earth
by making available to them the ordinances of salvation, such as baptism and
marriage.

When I
think of the word temple, I often
think of the word gather, because it
is the essence of God’s work to gather His people to the temple, where they can
receive the blessings connected with being part of an eternal family. Ultimately, it was to the temples established
in the tops of the everlasting hills that Mormon pioneers like Mary Wanlass
gathered in the nineteenth century, and it is to temples like the Provo City
Center Temple that faithful modern Mormons gather today.

* * *

The
painting of Mary Wanlass hangs on a wall on a lower level of the temple, not
far from the base of the beautiful staircase that I adore as Jacob’s
ladder. I pass this painting often, and
I usually glance at it as I walk by. It
portrays a simple scene. The artist has
given Mary’s face an ambiguous expression free of sentimentality. Mary appears neither happy nor sad as she
goes about her daily work of survival, searching for food for herself and her
family.

She is
thinking about something, but she does not reveal what, so my mind fills with
questions as I look upon her and contemplate her circumstances. Often I just feel this painting when I look at it, not sure what I should think,
if anything. It speaks to me
somehow. It resonates within my soul,
and I find it deeply meaningful to me on a personal level, yet I cannot fully
articulate why.

Perhaps
because I am also pressing forward on a long journey fraught with hazards. Perhaps because I too have little chance of
success without the loving hand of God to help me along.

I
appreciate the artist for the restrained and reverent depiction of Mary,
because the painting does not tell me what to think, but leaves me free to
experience different thoughts and feelings on different occasions as I glance
at Mary’s enigmatic face and ponder what little I know about her and her
pioneer experiences.

The painting
never fails to humble me. It always
softens my heart.

If I am in
a low mood and inclined to complain, I think of Mary’s many hardships
throughout her life, and I am shamed into silence. Mary was probably too busy struggling for her
own survival and burying her dead along the way to think much about herself and
to descend into petty, self-pitiful complaining. She experienced so much death in her life—of her
parents, of her siblings, of her own children.

If I am in
a cheerful mood, I think of my many blessings and feel gratitude for Mary’s
sacrifice and her example. I am reminded
that the faithfulness of Mormon pioneers a century and a half ago played a key
role in making this temple and my own blessed life possible.

If I ever
meet Mary in the next life, I’ll be interested to hear her story from her own
mouth and to have her fill in details that are presently unavailable.

I doubt
that I will have much to say to her other than what I have written in this
essay. But maybe what I’ve written will be good enough for a fine conversation.

“Wanlass”
is sometimes spelled “Wanless.” The original painting of Mary is not available for public viewing outside the Provo City Center Temple. Images of the painting were not available on the Internet when I first published this essay, but now the painting can be viewed at https://www.alyoung.com/art/work-mary_wanlass.html. All photos in this blog post were taken by me on October 14, 2016, except for those that list an Internet source beneath them.

The
facts I set forth in this account might not be perfectly accurate. For example, in a previous draft of this essay, I stated that Annie Sophia Hutchings never had any children, because I saw no record of children in Ancestry.com, but one of Annie's descendants later informed me that Annie did in fact have children. I culled the facts for this essay from a handful of Internet
sources listed below, but those sources are not original and do not always
identify the original sources of the information in them. They also occasionally contradict each other
in some of the particulars, and I did not attempt to resolve all of those
contradictions.

These
are the online sources that I relied on the most (still viewable as of October
10, 2016). I express special thanks to
Alison Coutts for referring me to the first two.

I
relied on other online sources as well, such as Google searches, various
maps and articles on Wikipedia, and facts listed on several LDS sites, but I did not
document them. I cannot vouch for the
absolute accuracy of all the information I perused, especially on Wikipedia.

I
identified some assertions in the main source, the wanlessweb.org source, that
cannot be correct, such as the claim that the battle of Lexington, Missouri,
was taking place at the time Jane Bell was dying. Jane Bell died on June 6, 1862, but the first
battle of Lexington occurred in September 1861, and the second battle of
Lexington occurred in October 1864.
Perhaps a different battle was taking place, or perhaps Jane Bell’s
death date was incorrect, or perhaps the memory itself is erroneous. I don’t know.

I
also did not research the details of when Mary’s uncle William traveled from
England to Missouri or from Missouri to Utah.
My primary interest was in Mary’s story, so I generally did not bother
to research events that were merely tangential to her story.

The
wanlessweb.org source appears to rely on oral history passed down among Mary
Wanlass’s descendants. I believe it to
be generally accurate, but as is usually the case with sources that rely on
human memory, especially when they involve hearsay accounts, it’s good to
maintain a smattering of healthy skepticism about some of the details.

I
have not taken upon myself the investigative task of resolving or even
identifying all the inconsistencies that I came across or the questions that I
had. I have not delved into original
sources, nor have I interviewed the people whose names appear as the
originators of some of these sources, such as the wanlessweb.org source or the
Ancestry.com source. In short, I have
not done the kind of meticulous, in-depth historical research that would be
appropriate for a scholarly article or book.
This blog post is just a rough historical sketch and might contain some errors.

My
purpose here was simply to relate the basics of Mary’s life story and to
reflect on my own thoughts and feelings about the painting of her in the Provo
City Center Temple. This is basically a
personal essay reflecting upon some imperfectly documented historical events. I do not present it as a polished work of
history. Anyone relying on this personal
essay as a source of historical research would be well advised to independently
check the information in it by digging deeper than I did, namely by locating
and examining original sources, if possible.

* * *

As
for the time period involved, at least one source states that Mary’s sister Sarah
was six at the time of departure from Missouri, and her birthday is listed as
May 10, so I am assuming that the group departed on their trek before May 10,
1863. Some sources list the age of
Mary’s brother Jackson as nine at the
time of departure, but Ancestry.com shows his date of birth as June 10, 1855,
which would make him seven at the time of departure, and I have chosen to
accept this date for his birth because of its specificity. One source claims that the family traveled
all spring and summer and arrived in Utah Valley in September, so I am using
September 1863 as the time of arrival, even though I have no idea exactly where
this information originated.

The
painting shows the mountains coming into view and depicts Mary after having
traveled for several months, so I am assuming that Mary is shown sometime near
the end of the journey. According to
Ancestry.com, Sarah turned seven on May 10, Mary turned fifteen on May 20,
Mary’s brother Jackson turned eight on June 10, Mary’s father turned forty on
July 16, and the twins turned five on September 12. For the sake of my own convenience in setting
out ages and arranging the facts in a coherent way, I am assuming that the
painting depicts Mary sometime after her father’s birthday on July 16 but
before the twins’ birthday on September 12.
I have no idea what the artist’s intention was regarding the specific
time or place depicted in the painting.
I see the painting as an artistic representation of a story, intended to
memorialize a remarkable journey and to build faith in those who view it. I do not pretend that this painting is
attempting perfect historical or geographical accuracy or specificity.

* * *

The
quotation from Jane Bell (“Don’t give your father any peace until he goes to
the Rocky Mountains”), as well as most of the information about the family’s
activities in Missouri and about the details of the 1863 trek, come from the wanlessweb.org
source. Most of the information about
Mary’s life after she started having children comes from the Ancestry.com
source.

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About Aaron Jordan

Aaron Jordan is originally from Salt Lake City, Utah. After serving an LDS mission in Russia during the nineties, he studied history and law intending to work for the federal government as a diplomat or an analyst, but ultimately the heavens harbored other plans. He lived in Virginia for eleven years until his wife’s career brought the family to BYU. Through his writing, he strives to entertain, to educate, to edify, and to give people more reasons to smile.